NEW YORK – Pierian said this week that it has teamed up with P4 Diagnostix, a laboratory network, to help physician-owned labs that specialize in urology, gastroenterology, or women's health establish next-generation sequencing testing for hereditary cancer. Joint customers of Pierian and P4 will have access to a technical assessment consultation, validation services, and clinical sample procurement for workflow design and implementation of NGS. Last month, P4 and Pierian said they had partnered to offer somatic prostate cancer testing.
PerkinElmer said this week it expects to beat prior guidance on adjusted earnings per share for Q3, which ended Oct. 2, and the firm's total revenue will be near the high end of the guidance range due to favorable foreign exchange rates. It said the quarterly results, which will be announced Nov. 8, will likely also reflect growth in the firm's organic revenue and non-COVID-19 organic revenue.
Decode Health said this week that it has expanded its collaboration with Quest Diagnostics to discover biomarkers for metabolic disease and autoimmune neurology. Earlier, the two partners had developed RNA sequencing capabilities. Building on this, they have now developed a national platform for collecting and storing de-identified consented specimens from participants in research studies sponsored by pharmaceutical firms, academic institutions, and patient engagement organizations. This includes Quest's 2,100 patient service centers and its ExamOne mobile in-home phlebotomy team, as well as a biobank at its laboratory in Memphis, Tennessee. Quest and Decode will share benefits from research, data licensing, biomarker discovery, or diagnostics development resulting from the partnership, which will initially focus on multiple sclerosis and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, with plans to expand to other disease areas later. Financial and other terms were not disclosed.
Nucleix announced this week that its San Diego-based clinical laboratory received accreditation by the College of American Pathologists. The CAP accreditation follows an earlier CLIA accreditation.
BioLytical Laboratories said this week it gained World Health Organization prequalification for its iStatis COVID-19 Antigen Home Test, which the company said is now available to procurement agencies in African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and South American markets. The Richmond, British Columbia-based firm obtained Health Canada interim order authorization and CE marking for the test earlier this year.
BGI Australia this week received accreditation from the National Association of Testing Authorities (NATA) for clinical whole-exome sequencing in Australia. The company said its 460-square-meter lab, located at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane, will start to provide clinical services after receiving the accreditation. Building on experience from this accreditation process, BGI Australia said it will look to expand its testing offerings as well as to seek partnerships in technology transfer.
Biobanking startup GoodCell said this this week that it would offer its personal biobanking services through concierge physician practices across the US. Patients of participating concierge practices will be able to have GoodCell store biospecimens for current and future genomic or diagnostic testing. Blood draws can be performed at these practices or at any Quest Diagnostics location nationwide.
Nanomix announced this week that it has signed a distribution agreement with Chilean medical distributor Diaclinic to market and distribute Nanomix's eLab analyzer in Chile. The handheld immunoassay and chemistry analyzer can return results in 12 minutes and is intended for use at the point of care. The firm currently offers its S1 Panel assay for critical infections, including sepsis, that measures procalcitonin, C-reactive protein, and lactate from whole blood or plasma.
Ovation Fertility has licensed Genomic Prediction's LifeView PGT platform for genetic testing, and will now offer the test to its IVF patients. Studies comparing LifeView PGT to conventional next-generation sequencing methods have demonstrated significantly improved clinical outcomes for IVF patients, including higher clinical pregnancy rates and lower miscarriage rates, Genomic Prediction said. The company added that LifeView PGT provides several capabilities beyond conventional methods including giving patients the option of obtaining additional information on the origin of aneuploidy, with improved accuracy of detecting mosaicism; and providing patients the option to obtain "embryo health scores," with PGT for polygenic conditions.
In Brief This Week is a selection of news items that may be of interest to our readers but had not previously appeared on 360Dx.